take an example from everyday life.  A little girl in one of the poorest schools brought her baby to show her teacher, and proudly displayed the baby’s powers of speech—­“Say a pint of ’alf-an-’alf for teacher,” said the little girl to the baby by way of encouragement to both.  This is the kind of rude awakening teachers get, from time to time, when they realise how much of the real child eludes them.  Psychology has made it clear that life is a unity and must be so regarded.

Part of this child-study movement has resulted in the slow but sure death of formalism:  large classes, material results, and a lack of psychology made formalism the path of least resistance.  Painting became “blobbing,” constructive work was interpreted as “courses” of paper folding, cutting, tearing; books of these courses were published with minute directions for a graduated sequence.  The aim was obedient imitation on the part of the child, and the imagined virtues accruing to him in consequence were good habits, patience, accuracy and technical skill.  Self-expression and creativeness were still only theories.

A second interesting phase of the transition period was the method adopted for the training of the senses.  From the days of Comenius till now the importance of this has held its place firmly, but the means have greatly changed.  Pestalozzi’s object-lesson was adopted by Wilderspin and thoroughly sterilised; many teachers still remember the lessons on the orange, leather, camphor, paper, sugar, in which the teacher’s senses were trained, for only she came in contact with the object, and the children from their galleries answered questions on an object remote from most of their senses, and only dimly visible to their eyes.  Similar lessons were given after 1870 on Froebel’s gift II. in which the ball, cylinder and cube were treated in the same manner:  progress was slow, but sometimes the children followed nature’s promptings and played with their specimens; this was followed by books of “gift-plays,” where organised play took the place of organised observation.

About 1890 or thereabouts the Nature Study movement swept over the schools, and “nature specimens” then became the material for sense training:  as far as possible each child had a specimen, and by the minute examination of these, stimulated their senses and stifled their appreciation of all that was beautiful.

Question and answer still dominated the activity; the poor little withered snowdrop took the place of the dead camphor or leather.  But underlying all the paralysing organisation the truth was slowly growing, and the children were being brought nearer to real things.

A third phase in this transition period is that known as “correlation”; most teachers remember the elaborate programmes of work that drove them to extremes in finding “connections.”  The following, taken from a reputable book of the time, will exemplify the principle: 

  A WEEK’S PROGRAMME